ould have amply sufficed to build the line from Lexington
to Knoxville recommended by Mr. Lincoln--the general's effort resulting
only in his being driven back to Louisville; that in 1863, Burnside,
under greater difficulties, made the march and successfully held
Knoxville, even without a railroad, which Thomas with a few regiments
could have accomplished in 1861; and that in the final collapse of the
rebellion, in the spring of 1865, the beaten armies of both Johnston and
Lee attempted to retreat for a last stand to this same mountain region
which Mr. Lincoln pointed out in December, 1861.

Though the President received no encouragement from senators and
representatives in his plan to take possession of East Tennessee, that
object was specially enjoined in the instructions to General Buell when
he was sent to command in Kentucky.

"It so happens that a large majority of the inhabitants of eastern
Tennessee are in favor of the Union; it therefore seems proper that you
should remain on the defensive on the line from Louisville to Nashville,
while you throw the mass of your forces by rapid marches by Cumberland
Gap or Walker's Gap on Knoxville, in order to occupy the railroad at
that point, and thus enable the loyal citizens of eastern Tennessee to
rise, while you at the same time cut off the railway communication
between eastern Virginia and the Mississippi."

Three times within the same month McClellan repeated this injunction to
Buell with additional emphasis. Senator Andrew Johnson and
Representative Horace Maynard telegraphed him from Washington:

"Our people are oppressed and pursued as beasts of the forest; the
government must come to their relief."

Buell replied, keeping the word of promise to the ear, but, with his
ambition fixed on a different campaign, gradually but doggedly broke it
to the hope. When, a month later, he acknowledged that his preparations
and intent were to move against Nashville, the President wrote him:

"Of the two, I would rather have a point on the railroad south of
Cumberland Gap than Nashville. _First_, because it cuts a great artery
of the enemy's communication which Nashville does not; and, _secondly_,
because it is in the midst of loyal people, who would rally around it,
while Nashville is not.... But my distress is that our friends in East
Tennessee are being hanged and driven to despair, and even now, I fear,
are thinking of taking rebel arms for the sake of personal protection